The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.

If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.

Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.

Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.

Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.

The public have neither shame or gratitude.

Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.